Hour of the Horde

8

“Tell me his name again,” said Miles.

“His name is Vouhroi,” replied Chak’ha.

They were seated together in the ship’s lounge. Miles had made Chak’ha bring his own chair and table unit over close beside Miles’ own. Now, unlike all the others aboard the ship, they sat in the lounge together in conversation, as they had for nearly two weeks now. Chak’ha had resisted this closeness at first, but Miles had forced it. Then, in the end, the tiger-faced alien had yielded and accepted what was almost a friendship. In fact, he had become more dependent on it than was Miles, so that he followed Miles about and stayed close to him as many of their waking hours as was possible.

No doubt the other twenty-one aboard the ship had observed this conversational closeness. But since Miles and Chak’ha were together at the bottom of the pecking order, it seemed that none of the others would lower themselves to notice their exception to the normal social pattern aboard the vessel. So for nearly two weeks, undisturbed, Miles had been able to study the others as they moved about the ship and occasionally—without apparent reason—merged in battle or continued to ignore or give way to one another in accordance to their relative positions in the pecking order.

Luhon was the leader—there was no doubt about that. Just below him was Eff, who, oddly enough, turned out to be the rotund, bearlike alien who had seemed so harmless to Miles at first sight. These two seemed satisfied with their relative positions. But below the rank of Eff the members of the pecking order were continually being challenged by the members immediately below them.

“Why do they keep fighting, when the same one always loses and the same one always wins?” Miles had asked Chak’ha.

Chak’ha shook his head.

“I don’t know, but,” he said, “I think it’s because we’ve got nothing else to do. Fighting is all we’ve got. And the fight just might turn out differently the next time.”

Miles had nodded. He had carefully set himself to learn the rank of each crew member in the pecking order, but his interest had centered on Vouhroi, who was next above Miles himself now that Miles had conquered Chak’ha.

Miles had begun to plan. He could do nothing until he was in control of the others aboard this ship. That meant winning his way to the top of the pecking order. Vouhroi was the first step he must mount. He had studied Vouhroi, therefore, not merely with the desire of someone wanting to improve his rank among his fellows for his own satisfaction, but with the same combination of hunger, fury, and creative desire with which he had attacked his paintings, back on Earth. It was a method of attack that would not consider any result short of success.

Physically, Miles told himself, each of the others aboard must have some point or points at which he was vulnerable. Weak spots. What were the weak spots of Vouhroi?

The one he studied was a lean but powerful-looking, catlike alien. Not heavily catlike as was the tigerish Chak’ha, but with the long-legged, high-haunched feline grace of a Canadian lynx. Vouhroi’s chair in the lounge was almost directly opposite that of Miles, and while he had never overtly acknowledged Miles’ existence, Miles had come to be expert at reading the small signs in the other aliens that warned him that they were aware of his presence and braced against any sudden unexpected attack by him.

Clearly, of all the others, Vouhroi, who was next in line above Miles, was not about to be taken by surprise by any unexpected attack by Miles. His back was always to the wall, and his eyes—though apparently focused generally on the room—always included Miles within their range of vision. Though apparently relaxed, when Miles was present the lynxlike alien was always in a position from which he could get to his feet in an instant.

Nor was this treatment just for Miles. Everyone in the pecking order, Miles noticed, watched the individual just below him in the same way.

A surprise attack, the jumping of your opponent from behind or in a second of disadvantage, was only one more tactic in the ruleless battles that were fought between members of the crew. No advantage was unfair if it led to winning. Cold-bloodedly Miles made plans to make use of the unfair advantages at his disposal. He gave Chak’ha instructions.

The end result of those instructions was the conversation that they were having now as they sat in the lounge looking across at Vouhroi. The timbre of Miles’ voice and that of Chak’ha’s were very close—close enough so that practice could make them almost identical. For more than a week now, Miles had been secretly practicing with Chak’ha to imitate the pronunciation Chak’ha gave to Vouhroi’s name.

Now he repeated the name after Chak’ha. The tigerfaced alien nodded.

“Right,” he said at last. “It sounds right the way you say it now.”

“Good,” answered Miles. He glanced across at Vouhroi, apparently dozing, with half-closed eyelids, across the lounge. “I’ll go forward now. You wait a few minutes and then stroll aft.”

Miles got up from his chair in the lounge and wandered toward the front end of the lounge and from there into the corridor leading to the control room in front. He went halfway up the corridor, turned, put his shoulders against the wall, and waited.

With his mind he measured the slow seconds as they flowed by. Ever since the Center Aliens had changed him physically, he had been aware of differences in mind and mental skills as well. One of these was this ability to keep time in his head as well as any watch. So he waited while the minutes passed, and after perhaps three and a half minutes Eff came down the corridor from the control room, gave him the barest glance, and passed on without pausing, his rotund figure disappearing into the lounge. Miles waited another minute and a half. Then, quietly, he walked down the corridor until he was just out of sight of the lounge and the position of Vouhroi’s chair in the lounge.

From where he stood flattened against the inside wall of the corridor, he could just see the entrance to the farther corridor leading back to the crew quarters and could see against the inner wall there the blocky outline of Chak’ha waiting.

Then he shouted, in the closest imitation of Chak’ha’s voice and accent he could manage.

“Vouhroi!”

“Vouhroi!” It was a shout in Chak’ha’s voice from the other corridor. Chak’ha was now running into the lounge, continuing to shout as he came. “Vouhroi! Vouhroi! Vouhroi…”

Miles launched himself toward the lounge, running at top speed and as noiselessly as he could. He had a moment’s glimpse of Chak’ha rushing in from the opposite direction—of Vouhroi with his back turned, staring at Chak’ha. Then Miles hit the lynxlike alien with a hard tackle at waist level.

He slammed the unprepared Vouhroi down against the deck of the lounge—hard enough, Miles would have thought, to knock out a human being. But even as he was thrown to the deck, Vouhroi was attempting to twist around in Miles’ grasp, and though his head slammed hard on the uncarpeted surface beneath them, he did not appear to be stunned.

Miles already had Vouhroi in the same full nelson which had worked so well with Chak’ha. At the same time that Miles began to exert pressure against the other’s neck, he clamped his own human legs around the legs of Vouhroi and tried to hold them as Vouhroi attempted to kick and scramble loose. But the alien’s legs were too powerful. They broke free, and Miles shifted his leg grip to a scissors hold around Vouhroi’s narrow waist.

Vouhroi surged about and for one furious moment succeeded in rising to his feet, with Miles riding on his back. Then Miles’ weight overbalanced him and he fell backward. Lying underneath the alien, Miles continued to apply pressure to Vouhroi’s neck. He half expected the overdrive strength to come to his aid, as it had with Chak’ha. But it did not come, and it was not needed.

Already Vouhroi’s neck was starting to give. It did not, indeed, have as much inner stiffness and strength as had Chak’ha’s. Miles felt it bend—and almost at once the tranquilizing gray fog, the feeling of weakness and indifference, closed in about him and his opponent, and he drifted dimly off into unconcern, the battle fires of emotion within him damped and extinguished.

When he woke on his bunk after this second battle, however, there was a face looming close above him. It was the face of Chak’ha, and coming from Chak’ha, Miles sensed clearly a strange emotion—something between glee and triumph.

“Awake, Miles?” asked Chak’ha.

“Awake,” replied Miles a little thickly.

The face of Chak’ha came closer. He lowered his voice to what, for him, was the equivalent of a whisper.

“We did it, Miles! Didn’t we do it?”

“I did it,” said Miles. “With your help.”

“That’s what I mean,” whispered Chak’ha savagely. “With my help. You did it with my help. The two of us together.”

Chak’ha’s eyes half-closed. Once more there came from him, to Miles’ emotion-sensing capability, a feeling of great relief and joy and friendship.

For the first time, Miles realized that Chak’ha had expected to be disowned by Miles once Miles had moved one more step up the ladder. There was something deeply touching about the emotion that flowed from the tiger-faced individual bent closely above his bunk. Miles reached out to grasp one of the thick, stubby, clawed hands of Chak’ha in his own. Chak’ha looked down at the joined extremities in surprise.

“This is how we do it among my people,” said Miles and shook Chak’ha’s hand, then let it go. Chak’ha looked for a moment wonderingly at his own released hand, then stared back at Miles, and the feeling of happiness from him increased.

Miles drifted back off into slumber, carrying that feeling of happiness and friendship with him.

In the next few weeks that followed, he fought his way up through the pecking order. In each case, after winning, he tried to make friends with the alien he had just conquered. One or two of those he had beaten became friendly. But none of them became as close to him as Chak’ha, who now followed him about continually. In time, there were left only two crew members aboard who did not acknowledge Miles’ presence or answer when he spoke to them. These were Eff and Luhon, the one whom nobody else could beat.

The opposition had grown progressively more difficult as Miles had mounted the ladder of the pecking order. His last fight, with a dark-skinned humanoid named Henaoa, had taken all of Miles’ strength and skill to win. Logically, therefore, he could not expect to conquer the two remaining crew members. Even if he did somehow manage to conquer Eff, certainly he would not be able to conquer Luhon.

The secrets of their individual strengths were now quite clear to him. In Eff’s case, the rotund body was all muscle—he was not plump, he was a chunk of heavy-bodied power. In Luhon’s case, his secret was that speed which Miles had already observed. Certainly there must be strength connected with it. But in any case, Luhon’s reflexes were such that it would be necessary for Miles to conquer the gray-skinned alien with his first blow—because the chances were that he would not have a chance to land a second.

But Luhon was in the future. Eff was in the present, and Miles was aware that Eff had been subtly on guard ever since Miles’ last victory—for all that the rotund alien appeared to ignore everyone but Luhon.

For a full week, Miles studied Eff. At first it seemed that there was no point of weakness about him. The joints of his body were solid and deeply set in muscle and flesh. His neck was so short as to be almost nonexistent. The full nelson that Miles had used to advantage several times now would not work this time—let alone the fact that Eff had undoubtedly noted its use and was on guard. Miles raked over the dead coals of his younger memories before polio had stricken and made useless his arm. There must have been other wrestling holds or tricks that he must have known or read about or heard about, once upon a time. He needed something unexpected to use against Eff.

In the end, he concentrated his study on Eff’s waist and the lower part of his trunk. As far as he could discover, the bearlike alien had a humanlike chest, ribs, and diaphragm. There was just a chance in that fact, if Miles could catch Eff at the right spot in the ship.

He had to wait several days before that chance came. During those days he stayed close to Eff, who only by the merest flicker of an eyelid or twitch of a furry ear acknowledged the fact he was being followed. But Eff’s vigilance did not relax. In spite of this, the time came when Miles, following closely behind him, saw Eff less than two arm’s lengths away from him, turning from the corridor around a little angle into the lounge.

Miles leaped upon him from behind.

Eff had been on guard against any attack, and he was turning to face Miles even as Miles hit him. But Miles had waited for just this place to start the fight. The momentum of his charge drove the bearlike alien into the angle where two walls met, so that in falling, Eff was crowded into the corner. He went down on his side, with Miles’ leg closing about the thick waist and one furry arm. As they landed on the floor, Miles caught Eff’s remaining free arm in both hands and twisted it up behind the stocky body.

Even with his two arms against Eff’s one, he found it almost impossible to keep that other arm imprisoned. The arm caught by Miles’ legs, however, was held. Eff’s shoulder was wedged in the corner, his arm and waist imprisoned by the muscles of Miles’ interlocked legs in a scissors grip which Miles proceeded now to tighten around Eff’s waist, his left knee driving hard up into the alien’s diaphragm area just below the rib cage.

Eff struggled—but they were locked together. Miles could do no more than hold Eff’s left arm twisted up behind him while their combined weights and the scissors hold kept the other arm pinned. To the watching crew members that soon gathered in a semicircle around them, it seemed as if nothing were happening. But a great deal was happening of which only Eff and Miles were conscious.

But Miles’ left knee was continuing a steady pressure, pushing, grinding in and up against the bottom of Eff’s lungs, driving air out of them.

They lay there together in the angle of the wall, seeming barely to move. But the struggle continued—for an intolerably long time, it seemed to Miles. He could feel that the pressure of his legs was gradually shortening the breath available to Eff,but Eff did not seem weakened. Every so often he surged mightily, if without success, against the hold with which Miles was keeping him pinned.

But now Miles felt his own strength leaking away. He had only so much muscle power in his arms and legs, and that power was gradually being exhausted in keeping the heavier and stronger alien beneath him tied up. He felt himself beginning to weaken—and overdrive was not coming to his aid. He almost gave up—and then the old, familiar determination rose in him. Through the bones of his head, he heard his teeth grinding together. He would crush this enemy of his. Crush… crush…

But suddenly the gray, tranquilizing mist was rising about him. He felt his grip slackening, he felt his combat fury ebbing away from him. For a second he was dumbfounded, disbelieving. He had not yet lost. Why was the invisible protective device of the ship stopping the battle? It was not fair…

The gray mist rose inexorably around him.